The country I used to love

21 years ago, I was born in Surabaya, Indonesia. My dad never liked travelling, so I spent the first 17 years of my life in Indonesia. It was kind of sad and embarrassing, really. Back when I was in grade school, everyone in my class would brag about where they went during the vacation. Singapore, Malaysia, Europe, some of them even went to USA and bragged about it. And where did I go? Yep. Nowhere.

For those of you who have never spent 17 years of your life staying in one place, -- trust me -- you are bound to have an emotional attachment to the place, whether you like it or not. So when I had to leave Indonesia right after graduating from high school, I was scared. People said that you didn't know what you had until it was gone. They were right. It took me 17 years to actually realize that I was in love with it. I was in love with Indonesia. And the thought of leaving a country that I had come to love THIS much scared me.

So let's fast forward a little bit. I left Indonesia with tearful eyes, and it was three and a half years later when I graduated and earned my bachelor degree. After spending my last three and a half years in America, I flew back to Indonesia and my impression of Indonesia changed completely.

Ever had an ex who makes you think 'what the hell was I thinking when I dated him/her?' when you run into them after a few years of not seeing each other? That's how I felt about Indonesia when I flew back home. In the first 17 years of my life I spent in Indonesia, I thought everything was okay in Indonesia. The last three and a half years of my life I spent in America opened my eyes and I realized that NOTHING is.

Okay, that was too harsh. Some things are actually okay in Indonesia. Like the food is nice. Or we don't have to pay like 20 bucks (around IDR 190,000) to park our car in a mall for two freaking hours. Or, or that we only need to pay IDR 50,000 to watch movies, as opposed to 12 bucks in America (around IDR 115,000).

See? Some things are actually okay in Indonesia. Some things aren't, of course. And you're right if you're thinking we need to change them. You're right if you're thinking we need to transform Indonesia.

This might sound a bit arrogant coming from me, but PLEASE STOP BEING ARROGANT. Indonesia has been here for what? 67 years? And us? 20 years? 30 years? Indonesia has been here WAY longer than we have. We can't even get our parents to get into Twitter, why do we even bother trying to change Indonesia?

This might be a bit sudden, but let me bring our attention to the foundation of our country, Pancasila. I'm sure that we all could recite by heart each principle of Pancasila (except the very long fourth principle, I don't even remember that one either) so I won't even bother writing it here. The fifth principle of Pancasila actually implies that "all of the country’s natural resources and the national potentials should be utilized for the greatest possible good and happiness of the people". Each and every Pancasila's principle was written with us in mind (I can go step by step and talk about how each principle actually is beneficial for us, but I'm sure you guys would rather go to Youtube and stare at buffering videos since it's less boring). We should be proud of it. We should be proud of Pancasila as our country's amazing foundation.

You guys see? Indonesia is just fine. It's not Indonesia that needs to change, it's the Indonesians.

While Pancasila was based on western cultures when Sukarno first wrote it in 1945, Suharto later stripped all western elements from Pancasila. The five principles in Pancasila (Ketuhanan, Kemanusiaan, Persatuan, Kerakyatan, and Keadilan Sosial) were claimed by Suharto as purely Indonesian notions. This means that Pancasila is ours and ours only. And if we can embrace our Blackberry/iPhone, why can't we do the same with Pancasila? Pancasila is yours, just like your phones. Do you guys see those corruptors? Do you guys see those queue-jumpers? Do you guys see those exam cheaters? Those are the very people who are breaking our Pancasila. We get REAL mad at somebody when they break our phones, why aren't we getting mad when they break our Pancasila? Why?

Sure, there is nothing we can do about those corruptors (unless your dad is a corruptor, in which case you can totally do something about it). While we theoretically can actually scold those queue-jumpers, I wouldn't do it if I were you since it might provoke a fight (if your body is well-built and you're looking for a fight, feel free to scold them). The same thing with exam cheaters, while we can call our friends out when they cheat during exams, our friendship with them might be at stakes, so I wouldn't do it if I were you either.

Changing people is hard. You don't change people. People change themselves. You can only do so much as to inspire them. So let's start changing people by changing what we can: ourselves. Stop corrupting people's money (if you're a corruptor), stop queue-jumping, stop cheating during exams, stop littering, stop bribing, ... (I can do this all night long, but I'll stop here)

If I have to write down a list of things in my life that are worth fighting for, it would look something like: 1) internet, 2) coffee, 3) Indonesia, and 4) nap time. How does your list look like? Does it have Indonesia in it? Few things in life are worth fighting for, but the country that we were born in definitely is one of them. Let's make Indonesia better by changing the Indonesians, and start changing Indonesians by first changing ourselves. Start changing ourselves by treating Pancasila like our own phone. Just like we don't break our own phone, stop breaking Pancasila.

Check out Blogvolution, the reason why I wrote this post.

On being rejected.

"I'm in love with you," I looked up to her after putting all 99 roses down on the ground. "Would you be my girlfriend?"

She smiled. Just like a hunter's smile as he was approaching his dying prey right before dealing the final blow. 

Silence.

The only audible sound was that of the candle's flickering flame. The candles I put all around the 99 roses were silently melting. I nervously smiled as I waited for her answer.

She opened her mouth. I waited, but no words seemed to follow. Then, after what seemed to be a minute or an hour, she said "thank you." Her lips were still curled and formed the perfect smile. I instantly knew where this was going. Please tell me this is just a lie. Tell me this is all just one big lie. "Thank you Kent, really. I really appreciate it. You being here, on my birthday, at 12 AM. This is just... too sweet, but..." she was biting her lips, but I could still hear her words nonetheless.

I stayed silent. My eyes were fixated to the 99 roses with all the candles surrounding them. I knew exactly what she would say next and what would happen afterwards, but deep inside, I wished I didn't.

"But I can't see you as more than a friend, Kent. I'm sorry," she said.

I knew it. What she said shook me. My brain searched for words to say, my mouth gasped for response, but neither came up with anything. I smiled, or at least I tried to. "I know, this is your sweet seventeenth birthday, right? I, I knew that you would reject me. I just wanted to confess to you, I just want to... give you something to remember. I want to give us something to remember," I held back my tears with my eyes still fixed to the roses on the ground.

I cleaned up after my mess and wished her good night. And as soon as I saw her disappearing into her house, I ran back to my car and drove home. I cried and cried. And when I thought I was done crying, I cried a little bit more. I silently swore that I would be so good at everything and would not be rejected. Ever again. 

--

It's been five years since that happened and I have actually forgot how it feels like being rejected. Until yesterday. An e-mail from Purdue came with the header 'Application Decision.' I took a deep breath and clicked on it.

It's like every organ in my body stopped functioning and I couldn't remember how to breathe. The news came upon me and shook me to the very core. Before I knew it, I was laughing. I thought I was supposed to be sad, fall down and cry. But I didn't. I laughed. And laughed. I pinched my cheek, but I couldn't feel anything, so I punched a wall. My fist hurt, this can't be a dream. I punched my chest, forcing myself to cry only to find myself laughing, again.

This seemed like a bad joke. A very bad joke. I held my Blackberry to my chest, waiting for a follow-up e-mail from my school saying "HA! Did we get you? We were just kidding, here is your acceptance letter," but none came. That was when I knew this was not a dream, nor was it a joke. This was the reality. A painful one. I quickly replied to them asking what the reason for my graduate school rejection was. Fueled by anger and confusion, my fingers wouldn't stop typing. I sent it and there was no immediate reply.

I quickly resorted to blaming. I need to blame someone to rationalize this. This is not fair! I am not in the wrong! A Purdue graduate, with a pretty high GPA and a pretty high GRE score, rejected? It didn't make sense, at least not for me. The problem was, whom? Whom can I blame? None. I could blame no one but myself. It was then when something dawned on me. A revelation, an inspiration. I somehow recalled one of the two Bible verses I actually do remember.

1 Corinthians 10.13.

¹³ No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it. -- 1 Corinthians 10.13 (NKJV)

Being rejected sucks. Big time. Be it rejected by your crush, or rejection in general. But when a door closes, another door opens. And there might be even greater treasures in the door that just opens. Be strong and walk, believe that everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, then it's not the end. The way I see this rejection is that He doesn't want me to go for master's degree. Hey, maybe He wants me to learn how to write better and live off my writing instead of wasting my time pursuing for a master's degree. Who knows, right? 

My next plan is to either go to Singapore to work or to China to learn Chinese, which one would be a better option? Please kindly comment and let me know what you guys think, thank you so much!

(Oh, and for those of you wondering, yes, the cheesy roses thing was for my ex. I confessed to her three times before we actually went out.)

My oral surgery: part one

"It's inflamed," he said as he jammed a metallic rod into my mouth.

At this point of time, I was like ohcrap, ohcrap, ohcrap, please don't let it be a surgery. Please. 

"Relax, there is no need to extract it..." He probably saw my expression and -- in an attempt to calm me down -- said so. It worked.

Thank God, I muttered to myself.

"...yet," he quickly added. Think of a small kid who had been making a sandcastle when all of the sudden, an older kid came and stepped on the sandcastle obliterating it. Imagine how the smaller kid's expression looked and you'd have a decent grasp about how my face looked at that time.

"It's your wisdom tooth," he turned off the light and righted my seat. "Yours is a pretty late case, eh? Normally wisdom teeth grow between age 20 and 25."

"I'M TWENTY YEAR OLD," I said as I lightly hit his shoulder with the back of my hand.

"Oh. I thought you were 27. Sorry," his gaze fixed on the note he was writing. "Here," he said as he ripped his note. "Take this into the lab and ask them to x-ray your teeth.

I took the notes and -- on my way out -- I glanced on a mirror that was hanging next to the exit. Do I really look THAT old? I sighed and left for the lab.

--

The lab was empty, save for some children and their nurses. So I registered for a dental x-ray and was told to wait. In a room near me was a kid whose mouth was open. I could see a young doctor pushing his long rod into her throat (okay, that was NOT a sexual innuendo for you dirty minds out there). And the kid cried. Her cry was loud and annoying as heck. I was really tempted to storm into the room and staple her lips, but I didn't bring my stapler with me. And my name was called soon after, so I went into the x-ray room. Lucky kid.

"Mr. Kent?" The operator welcomed me into the room and gestured me to take a seat while he prepared the x-ray machine.

I nodded.

"Don't be so tense," he was wearing a masker, but I could see him smiling from underneath it. "What seems to be the problem?"

"My wisdom tooth."

"Ahh.. Yes, common problem for people aged 25 and above," he flicked a button and the x-ray machine whirred intensely.

"I'M TWENTY YEAR OLD. THANK YOU VERY MUCH." I silently swore if I met someone today who thought I'm 25 or older and say it out loud again, I'll shove my driver's license in his face.

"Haha," he laughed. He laughed. HE LAUGHED. "Please step here and bite this mouth-piece. And try not to move around while it is taking your x-ray picture."

I stepped forward and bit the thing with an 'I could very well be biting you right now' expression on my face.

"Please stay still," he said. The machine started rotating around my face and made a loud-weird-annoying-continuous sound for around 30 seconds. My teeth are getting dry...

The machine stopped abruptly. "Done. Please wait outside and I'll call your name when your x-ray picture is done," he said. "You may now stop biting," he added. Apparently I was still biting the mouth-piece. I was still biting it hard.

--

I came back to my dentist with my dental x-ray picture. He opened the envelope, held the content to a light and examined it. "Yep," he said as he put the x-ray down and folded his glasses. "Looks like we need to do a surgery." I could feel cold sweat running through my back. "When do you have to go back to America?" He asked as he carefully put the x-ray back into the envelope.

"December," I gulped. "December 12th."

"Oh, that's quite... short." He glanced at a calendar sitting next to his desk and said, "what about Sunday 10 AM?"

This time it was my turn to take a glance at the calendar. Sunday, Sunday... Then it hit me. Today was a Friday night.

--

It is currently 11 PM on Saturday. And I'm having my oral surgery in less than 12 hours. Oh and by the way, I hate porridge. The slimy sensation I feel when I swallow it is just so... slimy. So if I'm not posting anything in my blog in the next few days, it's safe to say I either die from the sheer pain of the surgery or from starving to death.

That one time I stepped on a bee

For those of you who never paid attention in Biology classes: do you know that bees are only able to sting once before dying? This is caused mainly because its stinger is attached to its guts. So when a bee stings a person (or anything, it doesn't have to be a person, really), the stinger sticks to whatever it stung and its innards would be pulled out altogether with the stinger. Resulting in death.

With that being said, let me start this story by saying that I am a kind kid. My parents always told me that bees only sting when they felt threatened. I never got stung by a bee, it's either because I was a kind kid, or because I always ran like hell when I saw a bee. Let's all silently agree it was because I was a kind kid. Apparently, a lot of my friends were stung by bees when they were a child. So, really, to some extent, having never been stung by a bee was something to be proud of. Or at least it was for me who had nothing else to be proud of.

Everything changed last week though. And I could never brag about having never been stung by a bee anymore.

It was five in the morning when my cellphone I put beside my pillow rang. It was not the usual alarm tone which would never fail to force me to wake up to hit 'snooze' and go back to sleep. It was my usual ring tone. I opened my eyes for a bit and saw the caller ID. It was an unregistered number that I had ignored for God knows how many times, so I instantly knew it was my dad. Ugh, what's with him?

I left my room hurriedly. My hunch told me it would be something super important if he woke me up this early. As soon as I flew down the stairs, he asked me where the car key was. Oh sure. Let's wake Kent up because you forgot where you put your key last night. Great.

So, being a kind kid that I was, I looked around and searched for the car key. The key that he misplaced the night before. I was glasses-less and sandal-less and as soon as I entered his bedroom, my nose was struck by a tremendous amount of cigarette smoke. I coughed and stumbled forward. It was then when I felt something on my left foot. At first it stung for a bit. Just like a small red ant's bite. Then the pain became more intense. Each passing second way more painful than the previous one. After three full seconds, I took a look at what I just stepped. A bee. A friggin' bee. I just stepped on a bee, and now it hurts. Didn't take a genius to realize that I just got stung. By an unconscious bee. I fell on the floor and pulled the stinger out. If the bee wasn't dead because I stepped on it, it surely was now after it stung me. Stupid bee.

So, my first experience with beesting was stepping on a bee. An unconscious one (by the way, cigarettes' smoke destroys bees' sense of direction and in turn, knock them unconscious. Oh I feel so smart...). Which means I just stung myself. Oh, in my defense, I was sure the bee was setting a trap by lying there pretending to be unconscious.The first 30 minutes after the beesting was hell. It swelled for a bit and it hurt a lot. Each step I took sent a jolting pain over my foot which forced me to cringe after each step.

To cut the story short, I found the car key and my dad left afterwards. In the evening when he got home, he noticed that the way I walked was funny and asked what was wrong. I told him that I stepped on a bee, and he laughed as he said, "Good thing you stepped on it. Otherwise I would have stepped on it. You took the fall for the team." I was really thinking to smoke a cigarette and blow the smoke to a bee, make it unconscious and plant the bee on his chair. Ugh. Of course I didn't do it since I was a kind kid. Teehee.

Now it has been exactly 10 days after I got stung. And it itches. It itches like hell. In fact, I'm writing this with nervousness and anxiety of me turning into a Beeman tomorrow. Kind of like Spiderman, but instead of shooting web to villains, my superpower would be being able to ass-bump someone I don't like and die immediately afterwards.

I'm a Christian! But...

Have no idea what to put as the image, so here is a picture of nyan cat.

It's pretty normal for an egoist to talk about himself. And since this blog is actually just one big egoist's rant, let me talk about myself for a bit.

I came from an un-christian family. My dad wasn't a christian, and neither was my mom. So naturally, I wasn't either. But everything changed when my brother became a christian. It was a normal thing for a younger brother to look up to his older brother, and I was a normal kid back then. So I looked up to him. I looked up to my older brother a lot. It was then when I came to know there was this invisible being who created us and died for us (at that time, I didn't know that Jesus and God are different). This was during my fifth grade. When people asked me, 'hey kid, what's your religion?' I would proudly answer 'I'm a christian!' without really understanding what being a christian really meant.

Fast forward a little bit to my Junior High School moment. I had always been a smart (read: nerdy) kid back then, so when I received my Religion exam paper back which had a large '59' written in red, I nearly cried. I held my tears in and asked my Religion teacher ways to get bonus point. To which she told me that if I were active in my school's Christian fellowship, she would curve my exam score up. So I joined my school's Christian fellowship. During this, I learned that God and Jesus were different. God sent his kid Jesus Christ to die and pay for our sins. When people asked me, 'hey kid, what's your religion?' I would meekly answer 'I'm a christian, a person whose sin was paid by Jesus.'

During my tenth grade, I finally joined a church (the same church that I currently go to every Sunday). It was during this time that I started to understand that a christian was someone who personally accepted Jesus Christ as his one and only savior. I think I personally accepted Jesus on April 2007. Or 2006... Or was it 2005? Whatever.  So, really, when people asked me, 'hey, what's your religion?' I would answer 'I'm a christian, someone who has accepted Jesus Christ and believed that He died for him.'

I am seven years old in christian age. During these seven years, I have met a lot of christians. Believe it or not, I once met someone who would shun people who didn't go to church. I mean, what's the big deal with not going to church anyway? As Billy Sunday said:

'Going to a church doesn't make you a christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.' 

I was a christian, and meeting this one 'christian' greatly disappointed me. I wonder what people who don't believe in Jesus think if they actually meet these so-called 'christians'?

One thing that greatly disturbs me as well is what the Bible says about homosexuality. Okay, before you guys look at me that way. Some people think that I am gay, but trust me. I'm not. Have never been and will never be. The thought of a guy's ass perturbs me to no end. Although the Bible clearly opposes homosexuality (as written in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10), I don't. I believe that being gay is something that happens naturally and it's something that one can't control. And staying gay is their right. Imagine if you fall in love with a girl and then suddenly you're told that loving this one particular girl is a sin, what would you do?

I have talked to several christians and they believe that being gay is a sin. And when I asked them 'why?', most of them told me simply because 'the Bible said so.' As much as this annoys me, there is nothing that I can do about it. Since I have been taught that the Bible is the truth, the words that I have to follow to no end during my lifespan. I don't blame them for thinking that way, and in fact, there is no one to blame. However, I was a human before I became a christian. I don't believe in stepping on other people's happiness in order to follow a book. Even if the book is the Bible.

In the book 'The Knights Templar and the Protestant Reformation,' Stanley Jones, who was a missionary, once met with Mahatma Gandhi and asked him:

'Mr. Gandhi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?'

To which Gandhi replied:

'Oh, I don't reject Christ. I love your Christ. What I don't like is your christians. So many of you christians are so unlike Christ.'

I don't even know where I'm going with this. I guess the moral of this post is that I proudly declare that I am a christian. I believe in Jesus Christ and I believe that He had died for me and you and everyone else. He had died to cleanse us from our sins. But He does not judge. At least he doesn't until the very end of the day. So who are you to judge other people who don't want to go to church? Who are you to judge people who are gay/lesbian?

I'm a christian, but if being a christian means that I have to step on other people's happiness and opinions, I'll gladly be an atheist.

Love is just a four-letter-word.

Which by the way, so are 'shit' and 'hate.'

I am no expert in love. In fact, I broke up with my first girlfriend like four years ago, and the last time I actually experienced this so-called 'love' was three years ago. This was the last time I wondered what she was doing before I slept. Or wondered whether or not she had eaten while I was eating. Or wondered whether she had been wondering about me or not. During that month my cellphone bill went up to $104.71. Ugh.

I spent the last three years of my life not giving a damn about love. Convincing myself that I was strong enough to walk without a partner. Strong enough to ride this rollercoaster without someone next to me. But who am I kidding? I need someone. I need someone to talk to during the low point of my life. Someone who would hug me and tell me that everything would be alright despite us both knowing that it wouldn't. Someone to hold hand with so I would have someone to hold on to if I fell.

"I wonder why you still don't have a girlfriend," she said as we were walking ever so slowly behind our group of friends. 

"I wonder..." I said without even throwing a glance at her. 

"I mean, look at them." She threw her hands up front, pointing to everyone in front of us but noone in particular. "You are quite handsome. You are smart. You are pretty rich. You are funny. Compared to these guys, you are completely in another level." 

'I'm not rich, my dad is. I'm not smart, I just know how to look smart. I'm not handsome, one of my friends actually told me that I look ridiculous. I'm not funny, I'm just sarcastically mean and you guys think that I'm actually being funny,' was something I would have said, but I held my tongue and uttered a 'thank you' instead.

I was honestly wondering when I said 'I wonder...' And I kept wondering why for the next week or so when one of my friends said to me, "the day you understand that a perfect person doesn't exist, is the day that you'll get yourself a girlfriend."

I had always thought of love as something beautiful. Something fragile. Something that you needed to hide and put in a safe box in order to not accidentally drop and break it. Something that 'felt so right' at the very moment you laid your eyes on it. Something like a Cinderella's glass shoe, I would guess. Then it occurred to me that love is nothing like a Cinderella's glass shoe.

Love is so much more like a pair of sweat pants. The kind of pants that Hulk wears. The kind that always seems like it's too small but in the end it would stretch and fit no matter how much Hulk grows. It's anything but fragile, you could put it into a washing machine and it would be just fine. And the best thing is that it's comfortable. Ever since I first read the story of Cinderella, I had always wondered how uncomfortable it must have been to wear glass shoes. One wrong step and they would break. Ew.

Love is not about finding the perfect person that would fit for us. Love is about finding and being the right person that would fit into each other.

Love is just a four-letter-word. There is no exact way to define what love is, each person has their own definition of love. It just so happens that my definition of love is a pair of sweat pants. What's your definition of this so called four-letter-word?